Fast encoding, external hard drive question

I have a VERY large project I am exporting from Premiere Pro. My actual workflow is Premiere Pro > Debugmode Frameserver > Avisynth > export from Virtualdub (lagarith codec). Now at the moment all my media and project files are being read from an external hard drive. (WD Passport Ultra.) My question is, it is taking an incredibly long time to export from Virtualdub, would it speed things up if I transferred my entire project onto my internal hard drive first? (WD Black)

In either case I am exporting to a separate internal hard drive anyway. So does the read speed of the extern drive affect encoding times?

Drive speed, or drive throughput, has more to do with smooth playback on the timeline than encoding speed, unless your drive is nearly filled. Processor speed, RAM amount and RAM speed, codec type, and GPU acceptation are the variables that impact encoding.

So, to improve encoding times a new workstation is typically the answer.

David Roth Weiss
Director/Editor/Colorist
David Weiss Productions

David is a Creative COW contributing editor and a forum host of the Apple Final Cut Pro forum.